Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
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Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#2Very interesting metamorphisis. But what is up with the first "Pablo Picasso Facts" at the bottom of the page...
"Picasso was the greatest artist of the 20th century."
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#3That's a lithograph, not a sketch as the title would suggest. All of those were actually made by adding material back to the carving.
Here's a better article on the process:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n3_v81/ai_136...
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#4These are pretty cool. It also looks neat starting from the end and working towards the beginning.
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#5Anybody know where you can get a print of this?
I found the final frame (http://www.artrev.com/art/detailview.asp?pid=8877781318&...), but I'd like to have the whole series.
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#6"...that it captures the absolute essence of the creature in as concise an image as possible"
I'm not convinced.
(This is not an expert's comment, I know nothing about modern art)
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#7The sad truth is that the majority of people would prefer the "verbose" version, no matter how genius is your cut-down version. Same in software engineering: nobody cares how beautiful and concise your code is, you are paid only for the results.
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#8"...that it captures the absolute essence of the creature in as concise an image as possible" I'm not convinced. (This is not an expert's comment, I know nothing about modern art)
So you think the image could be even simpler and still convey the image of a bull?
I would guess that he made a plate XII where he simplified further by removing the balls or horns, and then realized that it was no longer the image of a bull.
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#9The sad truth is that the majority of people would prefer the "verbose" version, no matter how genius is your cut-down version. Same in software engineering: nobody cares how beautiful and concise your code is, you are paid only for the results.
You should probably not draw the analogy to software too far. Clearly users appreciate (and are willing to pay for) beauty and simplicity in user interface. Look at the iPod. But of course customers don't care if your code is minimal or a convoluted mess, as long as the app works.
20th century art is a little different because the process is part of the exposed product - the art piece here is not the last plate (which would be a bit boring on its own), but the whole sequence.
Re: Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes
#10That's a lithograph, not a sketch as the title would suggest. All of those were actually made by adding material back to the carving. Here's a better article on the process: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n3_v81/ai_136...
Great article! This quote makes me grateful for version control:
Indeed, Picasso seems to have put into practice here an idea he had expressed a few months earlier when speaking of one of his paintings: "If it were possible, I would leave it as it is, while I began over and carried it to a more advanced state on another canvas. Then I would do the same thing with that one. There would never be a |finished' canvas, but just the different |states' of a single painting, which normally disappear in the course of work."(4)